Harry's Place

“That’s best left to the small-time carpetbaggers that run for local office.”

Or to the unelected ‘charities’ that Christmas now (apparently) belongs to….

This stream of irrational and silly nonsense almost never comes from “foreigners”. The perpetrators are in most cases white middle class english people with bizarre views and who often work in local government.

They do great damage to race relations in this country.

This stream of irrational and silly nonsense almost never comes from “foreigners”. The perpetrators are in most cases white middle class english people with bizarre views and who often work in local government.

They do great damage to race relations in this country.

Well, being an atheist *and* a foreigner I can’t help feeling a tad uneasy here…

‘Johnny’ has one ‘h’ and two ‘n’s.

If those atheists don’t like the British way of life they can bugger off back to Athea where they come from!

Its funny how there is a perception that most stupid people are right-wing; most of the really stuypid people ive met are lefties.
A lot of very stupid people are racists, but a lot of very stupid people are anti-racist, and are more likely to hate “fat cat” and solve the world with utterly idiotic economic policies probably shared with a lot of people on HP.
pick up the Daily Mirror if you have any doubts.

Heaven’s above! There are hundreds of politically correct ideas for reforming the language and it would take the judgment of Solomon for anyone to be able to sort the sheep from the goats correctly every time. I think the council officer in question can sleep the sleep of the righteous knowing s/he was trying to do the right thing and that at least the path s/he was walking was paved with good intentions.

I thought Salisbury council was merely calling for clearer plainer English, as in recommending that “going forward” be replaced with “in future”, for example. And if so, Amen to that, I say.

Well, speaking as a rootless cosmopolitan atheist, I can’t stand the phrase, but it’s nothing to with atheism. It’s just that it was completely overused in the staffroom by the dullard who was the former headteacher at the school where I teach and it was code for “never mind your opinion, let’s all unthinkingly follow my bad idea.” The more he used it the more it totally got on my tits (hope I can still say that).

Rootless cosmopolitan indeed – how very 1940s!

But yep – it’s a grating cliche (sorry, Brett).

I appear to have become mixed up with atheists and foreigners

Halp!

in the 1950ies, traditional small angel figures for christmas decoration from southern Saxony were called “winged year’s eve figure” (”geflügelte Jahresendfigur”) in stalinist Eastern Germany

“I appear to have become mixed up with atheists and foreigners”

For one second, I thought she was going to rumble our JewishCommunistZionist plot. But we’ve obviously done a good number on her.

I’m an atheist and I’m not offended. Neither is Keith Porteous Wood of

the National Secular Society who tells TYP that he uses the phrase himself. Indeed, so do I. I’m not sure how a council even “bans” a phrase?

Me too, it’s not in the least bit offensive.

What is ‘offensive’….I watched the rememberance service in Whitehall at the Cenotaph on Sky yesterday and was far more offended by…the clergyment in frocks from the C of E doing thier God bothering – the very fact that there is an official state superstition is absurd, the fact that there are state funded schools REALLY DEEPLY offends me.

….state funded religious schools…

“Heaven’s above! There are hundreds of politically correct ideas for reforming the language and it would take the judgment of Solomon for anyone to be able to sort the sheep from the goats correctly every time.”

Chris, I am afraid that your words are falling on stony ground, you might as well give up the ghost.

I’m an atheist and I’m not bothered; although, as a Jew, I find the expression deeply offensive.

I’m not sure how a council even “bans” a phrase?

What that means is that the council has banned its staff from using the phrase – in correspondence, publications, meetings with members of the public, etc.

I think Salisbury banning this phrase is part of a wider move to make the language council staff uses less “elitist” – the principle change being the banning of Latin phrases (e.g. ad hoc, ergo, e.g.).

“This stream of irrational and silly nonsense almost never comes from “foreigners”. The perpetrators are in most cases white middle class english people with bizarre views and who often work in local government.

They do great damage to race relations in this country”
True but they pretend to do it to help ethnic minorities even when ethnic minorities have never asked for such a thing.

They haven’t actually banned it; it was included in a “editorial style guide” as an example of a phrase which might not be understood and whose use might be best avoided. They’ve issued a statement saying “Salisbury District Council has not banned the use of any phrases in its written communications” and “The reference to the hymn sheet and atheists was included in the guide just as an illustrative explanation” and “It certainly does not mean the council has banned the phrase ’singing from the same hymn sheet’ or that we believe the phrase is offensive.”

This is a bit like the Guardian’s recent style guide which was actually quite sensible but which cautioned against referring to people’s ages in headlines unless it was relevant to the story, thereby allowing Rod Liddle to write an article in the Spectator claiming they’d “banned” the word “grandmother”.

The comment highlighted in this piece is just the inane wittering of an idiot, rather like what I am now writing. Posting on the subject of an idiot commenting on a story in a provincial chip-wrap is an odd move for HP. We can go here for that sort of thing, can’t we?

I fear you are right John M, and you too Wardytron. Some poor soul seeks to remove tedious cliches and unnecessarily convoluted phraseology from a council’s outputs (which one might not unreasonably assert is an approach which has its merits) and they find themselves at the centre of a media storm.

It just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished, but I’m minded to think the officer concerned will just have to stew in his own juice until this storm in a teacup has blown over. Never in a month of Sundays could this reaction have been anticipated, and while the council seeks to resolve the ongoing situation it is worthwhile to reflect that they were probably just seeking to create a level playing field for all users of their service regardless of the level of their English comprehension and range of vocabulary, particularly insofar as it relates to especially affected phrases.

Well once bitten twice shy, and I’m sure they won’t try this again. If you can’t beat them, join them, as they say.

“Johnny’ has one ‘h’ and two ‘n’s.”

Xenophobe!

You’ve demonstrated your core competency and pushed the envelope Chrisc.

What’s a story about Salisbury council doing in the YP though?

I blame the Left for Political Correctness. Political correctness started as a study of cultural Marxism in Germany in the 1920s, and was adopted by the 1960s counter culture, eager to promote tolerance and alternatives to the conservative values of the time.

Why do I blame the Left? Because they never can seem to grasp the conservative concept of negative freedom – that you are allowed to do anything that the Law does not prohibit you from doing. Being innate control freaks, and armed with the facile and ahistorical dogma of Marx which chimes with their prejudices, they cannot stand the idea of people doing things of which they disapprove. So they have to invert the culture, reducing it to the Stalinist doctrine that you are not allowed to do anything except that which the State allows.

Whereas hard Marxism applies this inversion to the Law, the “soft” cultural Marxism of Political correctness applies it to social mores, culture and taboos.

In the UK at least you could find many Conservative governments indulging in their own kind of “Political Correctness” long before even Marx was born. Most of this was sold as “morality” and served to keep people in their place. Have a look at this book sometime:

http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/ben-wilson-decency-and-disorder/

My local Lib Dems banned flying the St George Flag on the Town Hall, and marches by the local boy scouts,St Johns etc, on St George’s day a few years ago, on the grounds this might upset our “non Christian” local residents, (relatively few in my part of West London.) This supposedly easily offended minority piped up to say they were not in the least offended, but one particular Lib-Dem councillor kept banging on about it.

You appear to have some insight into this sort of thing ChrisC. Whose sensibilities are these politicians and bureaucrats so nervous of upsetting especially in a predominantly white indigenous area like mine? I can sort of see why a wanna be councillor might think it would do them some good to be seen not to be biased in favour of any section of the community (even if we are still nominally at least a Christian country) if we had a large ethnic vote round here but we don’t and certainly not enough to sway an election when planning issues like stopping Heathrow airport or Tesco expansion are far more headline grabbing.

So what is the motivation?

Is it your implicit claim that there are non idiotic local councils? If so please name one and comment on its policies wrt waste and global warming.

I’ve seen some incredible paranoia, hypocrisy and ignorance in rants against “Political Correctness” over the years, but Alcuin takes the cake for packing so much retarded bullshit into such a brief comment. Not content with pronouncing mindlessly upon things about which he apparently knows nothing (Marxism, Conservatism, history, life), he quotes from brainless gobshite Anthony Browne, late of Policy Exchange and now working for Bozza. Anyone wondering about the text that quote comes from, or merely to what extent Browne is totemic of the army of reactionary parasites whose slurry is becoming ubiquitous, might like to read this, quite possibly the most accurate book review ever fucking written.

Because they never can seem to grasp the conservative concept of negative freedom – that you are allowed to do anything that the Law does not prohibit you from doing.

That description of negative freedom is severely mistaken. Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. Alternatively, take the bollocks elsewhere.

Interestingly, since conservatism so strongly emphasises informal sanctions, it’s unlikely that any true conservative would affirm that whatever is not prohibited by law is allowed.

The distinction between positive and negative liberty is considered specious by socialist and Marxist political philosophers, who argue that positive and negative liberty are indistinguishable in practice, or that one cannot exist without the other. – whose strings would seem to have been well and truly pulled.

Chris C, with all due respect, may I point out to you in a proper comradely spirit that your own writing sometimes lapses, unintentionally I am sure, into language that can only be termed as potentially offensive to atheists. In your first post you used an regrettable turn of phrase that is unfortunately all too expressive of christianist divisiveness, namely “to sort the sheep from the goats”, while further down in the same post you used a word that some would find doubly offensive, being not only christianist but judaist as well, namely the Hebrew word “Amen”.

Kindly be more careful in future.

Joe, thank you so much for drawing my attention to the unintentional athiestophobe content of my earlier comment. I do not resent your contribution, indeed I will turn my other cheek so it may be slapped by you as hard as the first one. I do, however, assume that you took the elementary precaution of checking yourself for sin before casting that particular stone.

My only defence is that I am under considerable stress right now, having practised meekness for some days and not yet having inherited diddly squat to compensate me for my losses on my HBOS shares. My relatives just take too many statins, I guess.

I notice that Gregg didn’t actually offer any type of rebuttal to Alcuin’s point – instead he indulged in the typical tirade of insults that liberals offer whenever their false narratives are challenged.

Or whenever they are served up a load of cobblers…